East Bird's Head-sentani Languages

	region	Papua
	familycolor	Papuan
	fam1	Extended West Papuan
	child1	East Bird's Head
	child2	Burmeso
	child3	Tause
	child4	Sentani

The East Bird's Head-Sentani languages form a Family of Papuan Languages proposed by Malcolm Ross which combines the East Bird's Head and Sentani families along with the Burmeso and Tause Language Isolate s. Sentani had been a branch of Stephen Würm 's proposal for Trans-New Guinea . It has lexical similarities with the Asmat Languages , but Ross does not believe these demonstrate a genealogical relationship.

The East Bird's Head-Sentani languages, together with the West Papuan Languages and the Yawa isolate, form part of a tentative proposal for an Extended West Papuan family. They are distinguished from the West Papuan family in having forms like ''ba'' or ''wa'' for the second-person singular ("thou") Pronoun .

CLASSIFICATION

East Bird's Head family

---'' Mantion (Manikion)'' language

---Meax branch: Meax (Meyah) , Meninggo (Moskona)

'' Burmeso (Taurap)'' isolate

? '' Tause '' isolate (perhaps two languages, Tause and Weirate)

Sentani family:

--- '' Demta '' language

--- Sentani proper: Sentani , Nafri , Tabla (Tanah Merah₂)

Clouse (1997) classified Tause as a Lakes Plain Language , but its pronouns are not a good match. Ross included it here partially to spark further investigation.

PRONOUNS

These families share no common vocabulary, and are linked only by their pronouns. The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-families are,

;Sentani

;East Bird's Head

Burmeso and Tause correspond in their first and second singular pronouns:

Burmeso ''da (de-), ba (be-)''

Tause ''di, ba''

Information About

East Bird's Head-sentani Languages